Aluminum’s great for a lot of things. It can protect your leftovers, help you cook, and also apparently be turned into big ol’ shiny balls that glisten like bubble in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. (Did you see that, by the way? Hidden gem.)
The ball shining, which comes via BoredPanda, is the result of a Japanese jeweler, SKYtomo on YouTube, who was apparently inspired enough by what you’d usually peel away from your sandwich to just start hammering and polishing balls of it. Hammering, polishing, and grinding again and again and again and again. And then a few more times. And then just a little more.
Despite the monotony of the pounding, polishing, and grinding, the transformation of aluminum foil into divine sphere of metallic superiority is quite satisfying, if not downright mystical. Seriously, there is something about incredibly shiny spheres with ultra-smooth surfaces that makes you focus on their perfection.
In fact, the shiny balls were so mesmerizing that they inspired a bit of a movement of shiny-ball creation in Japan.
Well wasted the first day of April making a tin foil shiny ball. When’s this rain going to go away. Need fresh air and exercise #bored pic.twitter.com/VOqqIdcZEr
— Window, Door & Lock Repairs (@DoorsofDorset) April 2, 2018
Perhaps there’s something meditative about the repeated process of continuously making an object more “perfect.” Even if that object is ourselves!
If, for whatever reason, you do decide you want to make your own super-shiny foil balls, please remember that sticking them in the microwave is not how you make balls shiny! (!!!) And we only say this because apparently there were plenty of people who thought this was possible thanks to a prankster’s tweet.
Yall know this happened if you microwave foil for 3 minutes? pic.twitter.com/k4y51FyUN3
— Wilson♿ (@Badoodled) April 2, 2018
What do you think about these perfectly polished shiny balls? Do you want to shine your own foil as soon as humanly possible?! Let us know!
Images: SKYtomo, NBC Universal
More weird science stuff!
- Watch a volcano erupt as two scientists descend into it.
- A DIY not creepy at all cardboard spider.
- Why Earth isn’t covered in poop.
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